Identifying victims takes toll on teams
130 still missing as a sad, delicate process plays out
PARADISE, Calif. – The roving teams of forensic anthropologists have come from across the region to find the dead. They wear boots and masks and use gloved hands and trowels to carefully pick through the ash of the quickmoving inferno. Their task is complex, delicate and harrowing – find those who were unable to escape the flames, identify them and give closure to fam- ilies desperately searching for reunification or at least certainty.
It is unlike anything anyone here has ever seen before. At least 56 people have been found dead in recent days, making the 215-square-mile Camp Fire the deadliest in California history.
“We’re all human. … No matter how many (recoveries) you do and how good you get at keeping your composure, it takes a toll on you,” Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said. “It has an impact.”
Hundreds of acres of devastation, with only piles of rubble in some places to identify where structures
once stood, face the dozens of teams slowly and painfully searching the area of the Camp Fire to identify the bodies. The fire was only 35 percent contained as of Wednesday.
The task ahead is daunting. More than 8,750 homes have burned – thousands more than any other fire in state history – and the list of people who are unaccounted for stood at 130 as of Wednesday.
In a charred landscape filled with the mangled remains of buildings and vehicles, the specially trained eyes of forensic anthropologists have become crucial. “We’re skilled at telling the difference between burnt wood and burnt bones, and if they’re bones, we can tell if they are human or animal,” said Marin Pilloud, a forensic anthropologist with the University of Nevada-Reno.
In Paradise, where most of the search operation is centered, the grayed, singed streets are dotted with hundreds of search personnel and roving teams of forensic anthropologists who have volunteered to help from sometimes hundreds of miles away.
So far, just three of the 56 people found dead have been publicly identified – Ernest Foss, 65, of Paradise; Jesus Fernandez, 48, of Concow; and Carl Wiley, 77, of Magalia.
As searchers continue their grim task, officials are concerned the death toll will continue to rise. “I hope it doesn’t, but the possibility is definitely there that it could,” said Butte County Sheriff ’s Sgt. Steve Collins.
The search
Pilloud and another forensic anthropologist from Nevada, Kyra Stull, led a team of 10 students tasked with identifying remains in the rubble of Paradise and other communities. Their process is systematic, and every house presents a challenge. Buildings don’t collapse the same way, and the forensic experts are assisted by firefighters who often must cut apart sheets of metal roofing that have “pancaked” on top of rubble and reinforce partially collapsed structures.
Pilloud and Stull are accustomed to identifying burn victims, but what they experienced in Paradise was unparal- leled. “At this scale and size of the damage, I’ve never experienced anything like that before,” Stull said.
Search crews also are sifting through the rubble of commercial buildings where they suspect people fleeing the flames may have attempted to take refuge.
Identifying the dead
As they are found, the remains are first carefully cataloged at the site, noting where they were discovered, the movement of the fire and the surroundings.
An osteologist, a scientist who studies bones, would be used to document the context and gather all possible information so that all the anatomical elements of the person could be gathered together even if the fire had caused them to be dispersed, said Christopher Schmidt, a professor of biological anthropology at the University of Indianapolis.
Once all the information that can be gleaned from the site is noted down, the bodies are taken to the Sacramento County Morgue for autopsy. Two mobile morgue units also have been requested from the Department of Justice to assist in identification.
There, investigators will first attempt more traditional means of identification, such as fingerprints.
If fingerprints aren’t an option, they will attempt to identify victims through dental records. There is concern, however, that some of those records may have been lost in the blaze. The town of Paradise is a near-complete loss; it’s easier to count the few buildings and homes still standing than it is to count the buildings that were lost. Among the destroyed buildings are many dentists’ offices.
At that point, investigators would turn to dentists the victims might have seen before Paradise, but it can be a long process.
Because so many of the bodies are believed to have been burned beyond recognition, officials are asking family members of the missing to submit DNA samples to see if they match any of the still-unidentified dead.
Making a plea for DNA samples from relatives even before all the victims had been recovered is “unprecedented,” Honea said. “Nobody has ever had to do this before.”